RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

Oct. 2014 project - Fallout:Equestria No God Below - 1. Hideout

Ursa was destroyed and Bears, unwavering in their fortress of ice, were no more. Marozi was destroyed and Lions, treading their endless savannahs of golden wheat, were no more. Alveare was destroyed and Changelings, timeless masters of the underworld, were no more. Andina was destroyed and condors, majestic far above the clouds and the Pegasi, were no more.

Canterlot will be brought down. Roam will be annihilated. All of you, no matter that you’ve got stripes or not, will be eradicated just in time. Who do you think you are to deserve eternity? It is just a matter of hatred… Sweet, sweet hatred.

τϧφΞϙυαϡѮφΟϗ҉ᶉẞӾЁɧɈɎȷɮɠəȟȾǵǖǞȖᶱ₫₪β

I wiped my eyes again. I was slowly spinning in a chair I had scavenged in a corner. The HMS Canterlot was lying destroyed in the bay. I could see it through the greenish screens displayed before my watery eyes. With its demise, all my hopes to go back to Equestria had been dashed. I could just watch the ashes flying by.

Alone and probably trapped down the city underground, withering away was a tempting idea. It would be fine. The dead have seen the end of suffering. I remembered the faces of Hollow Shades raiders’ victims. They had stuck to my dreams.

I buried my head deep in my hooves, covering a pair of eyes that I had been so ashamed to feel tearing up. My stomach growled; I had nothing left. I had already eaten all the bread I had stolen from the two dead bodies. They smelt like rotten yet the flies were still awaited. How long had it been since I’d wandered there. It was cold. Bodies shouldn’t rot that fast.

My vision was blurry. My hooves were trembling from the coldness of the room. My cheeks had dried out of tears and the few remaining drops of saliva I had were dangling on the side of my lips. How long had it been since I had left the Canterlot? I had lost track. Day and night cycles were an eerie thing deep down the pits…

When you’re unprepared, starvation and lack of sleep causes weird effects on the body after two to four days. It starts with disorientation soon followed with mental confusion and a loss of equilibrium. You just want to sit down and make the spinning in your head stop. Your temples hurt. You want to puke but nothing really comes up… just some acrid bile. It’s just your stomach fighting over its own acidic fluids. You want to drink but there is nothing around you. You’re too weak to move. So you grab rocks, wood, anything that could fill and feed the gap. You mouth just feels like dirt. You shiver. You want to gag and eat something, anything, everything… It drives you mad. And that’s the point… Lacking of nutrients, the body and even worse, the mind, start going to shit.

First it was auditory. Songs, laughs, and foggy words flying in and out my buzzing ears. Away. Coming from nowhere. Nowhere but from inside. Then, it was visual. You see the shit your body yearns for. Food. Water. Freedom. Light. Warmth. Security. Whatever… To me, it was Alea, crawling like a wisp of air between the chairs and desks of the room. Silent, she was paying absolutely no heed to me.

“Alea,” I whispered. “Alea, it’s me?”

She didn’t budge.

“Alea, please,” I gurgled. “Tell me it’s a joke.”

She looked around, ransacked some piles of rubbish, then she glared at me.

A voice in the distance cracked through the uncanny silent and Alea disappeared in a cloud of shadows, meddling in the ambient darkness.

“You sure they went through that hole?” A female voice reached my ears.

I held a hoof in front of my mouth after another gag had wracked my throat.

“Yeah! I think I’ve seen a group of Pegasi. They broke through the ground to get to the lower level. Another group came through too,” a stallion pressed to answer. “There was some gunfire.”

“I’m really questioning how you got to walk through here,” the mare mumbled, her voice nearly unintelligible. “You gonna get killed one day.”

“One day, yeah,” the stallion snorted back. “Don’t worry. I can fight off a spawn with closed eyes!”

“Yeah… and I can offer you a flying fare from Roam to Warclaw by flapping my buttcheeks,” the mare deadpanned. “So keep quiet and hold your weapon tight. It’s too calm ‘round here.”

“It’s always calm before the fun begins,” he defended. “Eh… your weapon is unloaded.”

“What? Oh!”

I heard somepony fumble through her gear and swear as a heavy metallic item clanged on the ground.

“Ah, bravo…” the stallion sighed. “Miss Seriousest-than-thee even lost her shit. What’s next? A boat crashing on our head?”

“Silence!” she snapped back with a hiss.

I already had my heavy gun readied between my quaking hooves. Though I struggled keeping the barrel straight towards the blown up hole in the wall, I was ready. I could see far shadows going around the other security chamber. They hadn’t spotted me yet. I was lucky. I won’t let them.

“Don’t come…” I rasped. “I’m… I’m armed.”

“Uh? You heard?” somepony crowed at a stone-throw from me.

Was I grunting in pain? I couldn’t tell. My ear were buzzing. I was starved out. I wanted away… even it was through and at the end of a bullet. My hooves failed me and my wooden rifle slipped and dropped on my side. I could imagine the dead Pegasi I had stripped off facehoof at the feat.

Heavy, the semi-auto weapon clattered and gave a loud shot. The bullet flew by through the hole and zipped far above the targets I had intended to hit. The metal shard pinged on the ceiling and vanished far away.

Answering my stupid action, a spray of firepower riposted. A burning sensation snipped in my right flank…

As dust settled down and silent took hold of the short-lived battleground, somepony unwisely popped his head out in the threshold of the large carved out hole. With picky eyes, he scanned the surroundings for a brief instant, saw my throne of leather, dirt and blood, and ducked back.

“There’s somepony,” he murmured.

“Of course there is somepony, idiot,” the mare grunted. “Who do you think shot at us..? Is it dead?”

“Haven’t checked…”

“Deadweight!” she spat.

“I’m sorry…”

A shadow thrust over the rubbles marking the entry of the booth. A shot echoed and something sharp grazed over my cheek. Somepony rushed over like a whirlwind and threw me off my chair. With a hoof pressed on my throat, I was lying on the ground.

“Water,” I begged as my vision grew dark.

“Come on!” she ranted. “You were shooting a dead.”

“I’m not dead,” I hissed with difficulty.

“What?” the stallion said as he came closer.

“Nothing,” the mare answered.

“I’m not dead!” I urged.

“He says he’s not dead,” the stallion pointed out.

“He’ll be very soon,” she said ominously as she lowered her head towards mine.

“I’m getting better,” I claimed.

Her hoof released pressure and I struggled away, grinding my chin on the concrete floor. Once again, she pinned me down, her two forelegs on my back as she pulled on my barding and spat next to my head.

“I’m not dead!” I pleaded.

“Bring me the knife,” the mare ordered. “He’s one of the Firsts.”

“Damn, they really went here?” the stallion gulped. “I’d hoped those were just scavengers.”

“Apparently,” she announced.

Like a grim guillotine’s edge hovering over my neck, I heard a knife being unsheathed. Then, a swift whistle slit through the air.

“No, please, I’m not!” I said, rolling over to my back and raising my hooves above my sorry head.

She spoke but the knife in her munching mouth kept me from understanding. The knife whistled down right at my throat.

“Hop! Hop! Hop!” the stallion shouted as it reached out the mare’s mouth with a claw.

A claw…? I wiped the dried tears off my eyelids. I had a Griffon and a Zebra hung above my head, staring down at me. The Griffon was the bigger and taller of the two, his yellow face and his pinprick black eyes standing over a puffy and feathery white chest. The sharp edge of his brown claws shone in the dim light of the room’s monitors. With that smug grin constantly cast on his face, I guess he was expecting to face off the world and win. Two strange three-barrelled guns tipped out from under his wings. Set in a triangle pointing downward, one barrel – the bottom one – was significantly larger than the others. Looking further, I saw another knife strapped to his right back leg.

My head fell aside towards the Zebra mare. Her white stripes contrasted with her very dark grey colour. Or was that grey stripes over a white fur? I could never remember which one was right. She was pissed, her frowned-up face darting fire at me from her narrowed yellow eyes. She was tense and still trying to lung at me, ready to cut open my neck. She was so close that her long uncurled mane and her blue necklace was resting upon my shoulder. Only the Griffon was standing between her rage and my poor rump. With her mouth-gun strapped to her side with a makeshift leather band and the Griffon’s claw pinched on her knife’s glistening edge, I was safe from now. I was definitely too tired for those antics.

“He ain’t a Pegasus,” the Griffon pointed out.

“Ain’t the first time they employ proxies,” the Zebra warned as she letting the knife slip away from her grasp in the Griffon’s talon. “What’s the deal, Cartier? You know we can’t mess around with the Firsts…”

“Pay attention, Zina,” he cut her off, pointing at two heaps of flesh a few meters away. “You gotta check your sense of smell, really. He just scavenged those two birdies.”

She frowned at the two cadavers, spat on the nearest one, and rolled her eyes.

“Not my fault if peeps want to be live targets. Brainfucked Ponies…”

“You really start sounding like them,” the Griffon smirked.

“Yeah, whatever,” she waived away. “What do we do with the bag of bones?”

They both looked at me with questions in their eyes.

“Am… from the HMS C-Canterlot…” I breathed. “Water.”

They glanced at each other. Cartier rose an eyebrow before peering back at me.

“You mean the big shiny wreck in the bay?” he asked.

“Y- yes…” I coughed after a long raspy break.

I rubbed my sides and my hoof came back a newly revived red.

“Hang in there, bro,” Cartier said, grabbing me by the waist and hauling me to his back.

“Are you crazy!?” Zina countered. “Hideout is not to be shown to anypony, Zebra, or dust specks.”

“He’s from outside Bahrneigh,” the Griffon snapped back, any trace of lightness gone from his speech. “He might know things.”

“I wash my hooves of it,” she blurted. “You bear responsibilities.”

“No care,” Cartier brushed off. “I’m curious ‘bout the outside.”

“Griffons…” she grunted, her head resting in her hoof.

After I had been stripped off of my snatched barding, we started moving. The trip saw me in and out quite a few times and, at each of my blink of eyes, I found myself in a different place. On a narrow glass-covered bridge above the city, back in the hotness. In a dark and steep tunnel, dank and sweaty. Down a pipe and a ladder, engulfed by murmurs…

My ears were listening to the sound of the silent walk, the air whistling through the cracks and the ruins. The sand was crumbling under hooves and claws. My rasped breath and dehydration pained my lungs. The moaning of a far sounding storm without rain and thunder was trailing behind us. The swearing of a disgruntled Zebra mare melted in the constant complaint of the city. My difficult breath echoed as I blacked out again.

“The password?” a male voice barked through an intercom, jerking me awoken.

“Come on…” Cartier complained. “Can’t you see the most beloved Griffon of the village?”

“I see one more than expected? Reason?”

“Cartier’s caprice,” Zina grunted.

“Tut, tut…” the Griffon rose up. “Scavenger found in the Southern Governorate, came on the boat the spawns took down three days ago.”

Had it been already three days…? It had no importance now.

“There are survivors?” the voice said in surprise.

“At least one,” Cartier shrugged.

“Did he speak? Did he say from where he come?”

The Zebra and the Griffon looked at each other. Cartier pondered, a claw on his chin, just before his face lit up.

“He said Canterlot,” the Griffon announced.

“Let me check with the procurator,” the voice declared after a long unsettling silent.

“Canterlot?” Zina asked her friend with a raised eyebrow.

“Haven’t followed in class history? You who’s always so swift at blaming Ponies?” Cartier snarled.

“Shut up. I just have a hard time with names. And schools don’t exist anymore anyway.”

“It’s Equestria’s capital. Probably blown up like Roam and companies in the Levant.” Somepony prodded my side and I grunted, trying to roll over as I still lay on Cartier’s fluffy, comfy back. “That those Ponies had a boat called as such is… interesting.”

“What if he’s a spy?” Zina supposed.

“It’s been like… two centuries, Zina. I don’t think they are that spiteful. They ain’t like you.”

The back of a hoof slapped across a grinning face and I fell off the Griffon’s barding. Hitting the ground sturdily, I sprawled on the dirt that made out the floor.

“Ziiiinna!” Cartier grunted. “It hurts!”

“It means you learn.”

“Shit, shit!” the Griffon complained, tip-toe jumping around as he held his cheek.

“You dropped your prize,” the mare smirked, poking at my side with the tip of her hoof.

I was lying my head under my chest, puffing clumps of dirt off and around my muzzle. A sharp rock was nibbling at my neck and though the position was uncomfortable, I couldn’t find the force to move.

“You made me drop it,” Cartier blamed.

“You chose to keep it,” Zina defended. “It’s yours by law.”

“You accepted that we kept it too! And laws don’t exist anymore!”

“I? You…” The Zebra threw her hooves above her head and lashed out at the air with a loud grumble.

“I’m here,” I growled weakly.

“Hey? The two birds of love?” the stallion gate-keeper called them back.

“We’re not together!” the Griffon and Zebra denied at the same time.

“Yeah, whatever. You can bring him inside. To the doc’.” The stallion coughed repeatedly through the intercom, giving us some bursts of static. “Cartier?”

I heard claws dig in the dirt as the Griffon focused apprehensively.

“Yep?” Cartier acknowledged.

“You get to speak to Shaman about it, though.” The stallion’s voice stipulated.

“The wheeled rag-mare? Don’t want! Granny’s creepy.”

“She came to me. She wants to see you presto!” The gate-keeper sighed. “Just, grab the flesh-bag and you two come in. Something’s lurking out around the metro station… It tripped on the carillon trap.”

As the intercom cracked, Cartier’s claws hastily bit in my hide and threw me back on his back. A metal door creaked on its hinges and the three of us walked in somewhere.

The first thing I felt was the warmth. I had left the dank coldness of the underground to some place warmer and slightly better smelling. I was finally safe.

“Doc’s in his office,” the gate-keeper said, his voice graver than I had heard through the sound-warping speaker outside. “You should stop bringing new pets in, Cartier. It’s not that we have an open buffet here.”

“The dude might have some good stories to tell. If he’s useless, at least he’ll entertain the kids,” the Griffon said, poking my side.

I weakly grunted back at him. He was upsetting to say the least, hurting even. But who was I to protest? I was the one free-riding on his back.

“You see what I have to deal with, Grinding?” Zina rumbled. “Damn child.”

Opening my eyes again in a huge effort, I looked with difficulty at a brown Unicorn wearing nothing but a key around his neck. His short sandy yellow mane was brushed back behind his ears and horn. He missed a few teeth and his flank bore a white millstone.

Grinding – It was his name apparently – had been sitting all along on a chair next to a small rectangular metal door, which he had closed behind us. Next to the chair dwelled a small desk on which a terminal was still flashing alive, a microphone plugged in one of its many empty ports.

“Shaman’s busy at the moment, but she’ll come,” the stallion stated before looking at me doubtful. “Just go see the Doc; your little Pony is quite a bruise.”

“No way,” Cartier joked.

Without any further ado, I was carried through a long underground alleyway. Its ceiling sparkled with old frizzling, dangling lamps and decrepit mosaics had once adorned the walls with heroic scenes. A massive Zebra holding a black sword in his mouth was lashing out at a massive lion in a whirling assault. One three-legged mare was smashing open a jar of blue goo that unleashed a stream of bats…

I guessed it represented some Zebra mythology. Stars, magic, military feats, and sacrifices seemed to be recurring themes… The most used colours? Light grey, blood red, grass green, and midnight blue. The flashy shades of the colours had long diluted and only a spectre of their former self still shone under the dim light.

I heard some Ponies and Zebras gasp.

“Cartier! Cartier!” A set of young, shrilling voices called out.

“Wow, wow, children,” the Griffon pleaded with a sudden honey-like, grand-fatherly tone. “I’ve got a wounded up here.”

“Where did you find him?” a foal’s voice asked blaringly.

Opening an eye, I found myself hanging upside down on Cartier’s back with four foals watching me curiously. Two young Zebras fillies stood on edge along with one creamy rose young Earth Pony colt with a chocolate mane and a slightly older bright yellow Unicorn filly with an electric blue mane. All of them were looking at me with their wide blue, green, and brown eyes.

“What’s your name?” the two Zebra fillies asked in concert.

Rolling over Cartier’s back, I fell on my hooves and shakily got up.

“Name’s Dervish,” I croaked, my mouth feeling like my teeth were falling out.

Wiping my forehead, I saw sweat trickling over my fur. My vision blurred and I would have fallen if Cartier hadn’t rushed to my side to hold me up.

“Is he okay?” the rosy colt asked.

“Not really,” Cartier answered for me. “Bad things happened.”

“Star monsters?” the foal added.

Cartier reached out and shuffled through the young Pony’s brown mane with a grim smile.

“Yeah,” he said simply. “Again.”

Once the kids were gone towards their own little games, I was brought around through a series of shacks build with scrap metal, wood, and pieces of fabric. Stuck in between the ground and a two-Pony high ceiling, the place reeked an atmosphere of closeness I wasn’t so happy about. It felt like a stable; a poorer version of one.

Hardly walking on my own, I passed by at least two dozen adults, Zebras or Ponies. All of them bore the marks of old or recent fights. One had even lost his two back legs and was now rolling around with two wheels stuck to his back end. Every time, they stopped their activity to look at my sore sides, sorry face, and bloody fur. They were all carrying weapons.

Looking away from the rows of habitations, I saw that we were treading along a hole in the ground. Rectangular, the embankment we were walking on was tiled and had decaying yellow markings. The bottom of the hole had rusty rails. Looking slightly further, I witnessed that the other side of the hole was a symmetrical replica of where I was. There, a set of stone stairs had been barricaded with rocks. The exit sign still shone red above the rubbles. I was in a metro station.

As expected in such a place, there was a wagon further down the platform. Stuck to its position for two centuries, the whole construction of metal had rusted, the once blue paint nothing more than old clumps on the track that ran through the station. The shattered windows of the wagon had been covered with brownish curtains and the entry to the carriage was also blocked by such fabric. A small rectangle wooden piece had been stapled to the fabric with ‘busy’ written on it.

“Here we are,” Cartier said.

“Finally,” Zina grumbled. “We were supposed to go scavenge some food cans, remember? Now, it’s too late to go back in the tunnels.”

“It’s the opposite, my dear. We can go back now,” Cartier noted. “We’ve just made a detour.”

Zina hung her head low with one long sigh.

“I hate you, really.”

Even I chuckled. Centring the attention on my now sitting rump, I weakly smiled at Cartier who shared it with me.

“You’re okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Not dead yet. Good thing. I guess,” I panted. “Thank you. Both of you.”

Zina nodded and Cartier brushed his claws through the feathers peppering his forehead.

“Was nothing, really,” he said. “We gave you water when you passed out.”

I will have to make up to that too, I guessed.

“How can I be of any help?” I croaked. “I owe you my life.”

“Stay alive,” Cartier grinned. “You owe me the tale of what’s going on outside the city.”

I chuckled, and looked at the Zebra.

“Th…”

“I want nothing to do with an Equestrian,” she cut me off. “I’m just tolerating you.”

She snipped her tail through the air, nearly slapping it in my face, and swivelled on her hooves. As she departed, the gun hanging on her chest clanged at each of her hoofsteps.

Shooting a wondering look at Cartier, who was still grinning by the way, I small-talked, “Is she always like that with everypony?”

“Uh?” Cartier blinked and glanced down at me. “Noooo… She just hates when things or people mess with her agenda. She’s a busy mare.”

“I guess,” I replied.

“Hey, Cartier!” a stallion called.

As an old blue stallion walked out of the train, a far younger and slimmer white Unicorn with a long orange mane falling over his face popped his head outside the door curtain.

“Hey, Gigli,” the Griffon responded, waiving his claw at him. “I’ve got a new client for you.”

Saying so, Cartier pointed a talon at me. The white Unicorn frowned at my general direction.

“New guy?” Gigli wondered.

“Yep.”

“Come on in, you two.”

Hauling me on my back legs, Cartier helped me enter the wagon. Inside, a series of bunk beds had been screwed to the walls, occupying the space where seats had once been installed. I was the only client. The head of the train had been made up in a small bureau. Though the exterior gave no hint about it, the interior was the cleanest place I had seen in a long while. On the wall had been hung a whole set of medical items which I refused to know the real use.

“So, what’s it for?” Gigli asked as he peered down to a series of boxes he kept under one of the bunk beds.

“I…” Damn my throat was sore. “I…”

Rummaging through his stuff, Gigli let out a cry of victory. Meanwhile, my eyes settled on his butt and went wide in terror. The buck’s cutie mark was a cartoonish pink Pony screaming in pain with a saw going half through his right back leg.

“What time is it?” Gigli said as he turned back to me with the widest smile he could muster, a saw hovering in his white magic next to his head. “Amputation time!”

I think I squealed like a foal. He rushed at me with a shout and I blacked out.

When I woke up, I had been laid in a bed with a Griffon and a Unicorn laughing in concert right next to me. My cheeks burnt with shame and, unwilling to cross their tearful stares, I scooped under the stained bed sheets.

“Fuck you,” I hissed. “Fuck you, both.”

“Oh, come on,” Gigli laughed. “It was a pretty good joke.”

I grumbled, “I’m more concerned about how you got that cutie mark.”

“Oh, that? Long story short, I saved somepony in a dire situation.”

“Are you… Were you a raider?” I asked.

“A what now?”

I raised my hoof, my mouth hanging open at him. How could he not know what a raider was? In which heaven was he… I sighed deeply as the truth sunk in. I was not in Equestria anymore. Nothing that I had learnt there would probably be useful here and thus, I felt naked.

Facing my silence, the Doc’ stripped me off my bed linens and prodded my sides. A sharp pain burst through my skin and I shrunk away from him. Crawling on my belly with long quivers running down my spine, I whimpered.

“It hurts,” I complained.

“No shit,” the doctor confirmed. “You’re in an advanced state of starvation and dehydration. You’ve got several gashes, two bullets wounds, you’ve got rat bites on your skin, and a knife wound on the neck, and probably what was two sharp claws dug in your flank.”

I glared accusation at Cartier and he put his claws on in chest dismissively.

“Not him,” the orange-maned stallion explained. “It was much bigger. To be short, you’re one damn lucky Pony. It will take a week to recover at least.”

Looking around, I saw an I.V. bag dangling at a pole, pumping some translucent mixture right into my leg. The ceiling had a screwed lamp that irradiated a powerful white light. On the back of the tram, a series of terminals biped at the rhythm of my heart.

“And you’ve got some radiation poisoning too. And I don’t have those…” He looked at Cartier. “You know… those orange bags.”

“RadAway,” Cartier brought forth.

“Yeah, those… I don’t have any of those anymore. You’ll have to be careful about going outside now. Your condition will have to be monitored closely.”

“Don’t you have some health potions to patch me up?” I asked.

“A what, now?” Cartier interjected.

Gigli was laughing slowly, shaking his head with a rueful smile.

“Where are you from?” the doctor asked.

“Equestria,” I answered half-heartedly. “I came on a boat…”

In the background, what sounded like an electronic bell clanged three times, cutting off our conversation for a few seconds.

“I must go,” Cartier chirped in. “Keep the juicy story stuff when I’m back, you… eh…”

“Dervish,” I said.

“Yeah, that name,” Cartier said as he walked outside the train.

Gigli and I remained silent until the clatter of Cartier’s claws had vanished in the dim ambient noise of the metro station.

“You’re really from Equestria?” Gigli restated, hardly believing me.

“Does it really matter now?” I glowered. “I’ve got no way to go back home. The mission is a failure.”

Silence hung between the two of us long enough to become awkward, which Gigli put an end to by coughing profusely.

“About the health potion…”

“You don’t want to spare one for me?” I said, neutral. “I understand.”

Yes, that would be understandable. I was not from that place. No Pony nor Zebra knew me. I was a threat for their security. In fact I was glad they hadn’t left me to die… I was happy that Cartier had taken me up.

“No, no! That’s not that at all. We ain’t assholes,” Gigli denied. “Health potions don’t exist anymore.”

I turned back and stared back at him with incomprehension. Health potions were a basic commodity back in Equestria. They were the blood of the warriors, wastelanders, traders, scavengers, and everypony else, old or young.

“Uh?” I uttered, baffled.

“The health potion technology is unstable. When temperatures changes rapidly and on a great scale, it degrades,” the white Unicorn explained matter-of-factly. “Unless you’ve got special carriages, refrigerated boxes, etcetera… Health potions often go to shit after two to three hours outside in Bahrneigh. When Equestria invaded two centuries ago, the First Pegasus Army experienced first-hoof the ravage of such flaw.”

“So no health potion at all here?”

Gigli nodded with a slight shrug. What in tartarus was that barbaric world? Health potions were somehow at least as important as caps. Speaking of those…

“How do you trade around here?” I asked and, trying not to sound too stupid, I added, “I guess I have to pay you back somehow.”

Nodding comprehensively, Gigli walked back to his desk, his hooves hammering on the metal floor. I heard a zip and he moved some stuff around in a leather bag. After a minut, he walked back to me.

“We use that as currency,” he said, dropping something on my bed linen.

It was round-shaped with little indents on its side and pressed in like a cap. In fact, it was a capsule, the beverage name ripped out by time, leaving nothing but old green and orange shades. I laughed out loud so much my sides wracked in pain.

“Some things will never change.”

Laughing lowly with Gigli raising an eyebrow at me, my head suddenly burst in pain and I held it in my hooves.

“Something’s wrong?” Gigli demanded, concerned, as he rushed to my side.

I was seeing spots of white in my eyes, small dots crawling against my closely shut eyelids. My ears were buzzing with a hissing that wouldn’t go.

“I’m…”

I opened my eyes with difficulty. She was there. Looking at me from behind the Doc’ with her purple eyes, she was smiling. A little, peaceful smile hanging in the middle of her scarred, red face. Alea… The Doc’ stared at my eyes and with a shiver looked back above his shoulders. His stare met the nothingness between the metal wall and himself.

“Do you see something?” he asked.

I wiped my cheeks. I was in tears. What was the use to lie? Alea’s shaking head was already vanishing.

“No,” I ghouled out. “Not at all.”

I curled up on my knees and broke into tears. She was dead now. I couldn’t save her. I hadn’t been strong enough… I wasn’t strong enough anyway. It was all my fault. I wished it was just a dream. Gigli stayed silent for a couple of seconds until he went patting my back.

“In an hour or two, when the I.V. has started to act, we’ll move out to the bar. I’m sure you’re thirsty.”

To be honest, I was.

“I would give a limb for a sparkle cola.”

Gigli widely grinned at my statement and I violently cowered away until my back hit the cold wall of the train.

“It’s a figure of speech!” I defended.

Gigli chuckled silently and asked, “What were you doing in Bahrneigh? You’re so far from home… Dervish. Is that your name?”

I nodded. After a fit of coughs, I started explaining the deal about that Equestria needed water cleansing talismans, which technology could probably be recovered intact in Zebra lands. I brushed over the last ten-year events that impacted the Equestrian Wasteland. I also broached over LittlePip’s plight, one of the names that would leave an eternal print on my homeland. However, I never went in the details. I had promised Cartier I’d keep it all for him.

“What happened to the city?” I said, willing to learn more about Bahrneigh.

“Well, Bahrneigh is not the name of the city itself actually. It’s the city-state’s name. We’re currently in Al-Marenama, the capital. Bahrneigh was one of the frontlines of the Great War. There was once ten to twenty millions inhabitants in the state. One year prior to the megaspell attack, it was invaded by Equestria who took the Northern Govern… region. There were close-quarters combats everywhere. Pegasi and Zebra fought for each corridor, each floor of each building. It was a bloody mess.” He sighed. “Who would have thought a paradise where the land of the sun meets the endless ocean would turn into a hellish pit…?”

“What happened during the Last Day?”

I told him about the Balefire megaspells and the pink cloud in Canterlot, which he winced at.

“It was fairly similar,” he confessed. “One thing though was that Bahrneigh is a small state but also a gigantic sprawling city. Two megaspells, what you called balefire, struck the Southern part of the state. The other struck the Northern part.”

“Wait… But there were Pegasi there!”

“In fact Equestria launched the one that hit the South. The Zebra Empire launched the one that exploded over the North.”

In the end, both sides had betrayed the city.

“I’m sorry…” I muttered.

“What are you talking about? You’ve got no responsibility in that mess, really! And the buildings are still standing.”

Speaking of which…

“How Bahrneigh did survive the blast so easily. The cities in Equestria were just a patch of ruins,” I notified, remembering the view from the upper deck of the HMS Canterlot. “We had a large view of the city from the harbour.”

“Yep, it must be weird for you,” Gigli confessed, “but Bahrneigh had an immense aerial defence system. That’s why many people had thought it untouchable… unreachable for Equestrians. The odds played against the city, again. The two megaspells were intercepted. It spared the people from the blast. However, the fallout… They were terrible for both sides. I think that that about eighty percent of the survivors in the city died in the first weeks after the megaspells struck.”

“I’m…”

“But it’s not all. There was a third megaspells that exploded in the city.”

“A third?”

“Yep. We don’t know who shot it… The weirdest part was that it happened five weeks after the balefire struck. Five weeks after the radio contact with the outside had been cut.”

Five weeks… How was that possible? Who would in a sane state of mind do that? That was stupid. Worse, that meant somebody had been still alive with that kind of firepower more than a month after the canons had finally shut up.

“It wasn’t a balefire bomb,” Gigli developed. “It was weaker. It still left a crater near the city centre, just next to the Burj.”

“Burj…?” I interrupted. “I’ve heard that name.”

“It’s the highest tower of Al-Marenama, like… one kilometre high. The finest construction of the realm. A monument to science and faith and victory.”

He chuckled cynically.

Back on the HMS Canterlot, I should have seen it easily, but at the time, the sand storm was already coming, obstructing the sight.

“It’s all rubbish,” he continued. “We know the Burj because of the crater. It’s from there that the star… monsters like the kids say happened to appear.”

I shivered. A megaspell that created… Star spawns, legends coming from in Zebra tales, was something that terrified me to the core.

“Yay, they eat Ponies like candies, my mother told me!” a foal who knew what he was talking about claimed, his rose snout poking in through a window with three other pairs of eyes.

Gigli shot up on his legs and leaped towards the window, towering the four foals with a surly face.

“I’m going to ground y’all!” Gigli warned.

“He saw us!” the two Zebra fillies shrieked and scampered away.

Like wisps of air, they all slipped out Gigli’s hoof-range and ran away. Only then, Gigli came back to me with a sullen chuckle.

“How depressed we would be without the gang… Bahrneigh and Al-Marenama are a living hell once you’ve stepped outside the station.”

“You must hate me,” I dropped.

Gigli stepped back. “No. Why so?”

“Equestria made your life a living hell.”

“Oh come on!” he countered. “I’m from Equestrian descent myself!”

“Uh?” I glanced at the door, expecting Zina to be pointing his hoof at her barbed-wire-wrapped dagger glaring eyes then towards me. “But I though…”

“Hideout is pretty cosmopolitan,” Gigli explained. “There must be like…”

Somepony knocked on the door and a Zebra stallion popped his head through the closed curtain.

“Ni karibu. Mimi nina busy na mteja,” Gibli spoke with a voice and language that surprised me.

“Auo vestro vidistis?” the Zebra asked.

“Ah…” Gigli mumbled, rubbing his forehead. “Taceo de illo bene ... Et… misit illum in domum suam. Nolite ergo esse solliciti.”

“Gratias,” the Zebra said and walked away.

“Even if I put up a multi-lingual plaque, he will never read, that buck!” Gigli ranted towards the door.

“You speak Zebra,” I said, impressed.

“Two dialects!” Gigli confirmed with a smile. “More or less, to be honest. Their languages are bloody difficult. Bahrneigh was very open towards the outside before the war, Equestrian was the lingua franca here. Though, with the war and dealing with the aftermath, it’s become less prevalent. Anyway… where was I? Yes! Hideout is maybe fifty percent Zebras, forty-five percent ponies, and five percent of others, horses, etcetera…”

“You’ve got horses?”

“Uh-uh,” he confirmed.

I was curious now.

“Say again?”

“We have horses.”

My head reeled.

“Are they…”

“Tall?” he ended for me. “Oh bloody hell, they are. Anyway, yes I’m from Equestrian descent. My grand-grand-grand-grand-grandfather was a Pegasus who was part of the invasion. He survived the megaspells and ended up stranded here.”

“But… I heard on the radio!” I protested. “The army is still fighting.”

Gigli sighed and, as he pushed his orange mane aside to reveal his green eyes, he sat next to me.

“Why do you think we call this place Hideout?”

He gulped and looked at me with his dark-ringed eyes. He hadn’t had a good sleep in ages. After holding himself silent for a couple of seconds he answered himself.

“Most people in the city have gathered in small villages. However, there are Zebras and Pegasi still fighting each other. They still think the war their forbearers fought is still worth fighting for. They still think Roam for some, or Canterlot for the others, will come to save them. And… I’ll be honest with you, Dervish, your arrival in Bahrneigh kicked the warmongering anthill back to life. We’ve survived until now, villagers, by detaching ourselves from the armies’ remnants and by keeping a low profile.”

I stared at my hoof, only able to listen to the stinging truth.

“That doesn’t mean I’m asking you to repair all this. It’d be stupid. It’s just that whatever your party wanted to do here, Hideout and its inhabitants won’t help you.” He wiped his muzzle with a long snort. “I hope Shaman will explain that to you better than I can.”

“Shaman…?” I pondered. “It’s a she, isn’t it?”

“Yes. She’s an old mare. She founded Hideout like… sixty years ago. She’s very old and crippled. But she’s our mother to all somehow.”

“So she rules here?”

“Shaman?” Gigli laughed. “Oh no, we elect our Procurator every year… I think it was called mayor in Equestria. Shaman is just… a general advisor, a priest. Well, she does the weddings. Some says she can read the future.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Rumours. It’s just that she talks very cryptically. She’s very old,” Gigli explained. “It’s not that I say she’s senile but sometimes her potions make you see weird things.”

“So you have a drug dealer in instance of a priest?” I asked.

Gigli raised his hoof, ready to interject, opened his mouth, but stayed silent. As he licked his upper lip with doubts cast on his face, his voice trailed out in a long hum.

“Well… From that point of view...” Holding his left hoof in front of his muzzle, he quaked a little from some repressed laughs. “I’m gonna store that joke somewhere.”

Gigli stood up and walked back to his desk. Meanwhile I lay in the bed in the most comfortable position I could find. There still was a damn spring pinching my back. Now wearing a stained white vest, Gigli came back to me with a bottle of water.

“Drink and get some rest,” he advised me as I sucked on the bottle. “I’ll come and wake you up a bit later.”

“Okay.” He began walking to the door’s curtain. “Gigli?”

“Yes?” he said after he’d turned his head.

“Thanks. I’d have died without you, Cartier, or Zina.”

He smirked, “Don’t thank us yet. I’m sure some people around the corner will want to put you to good use for basic work as a payment. Get some rest.”

“Yeah,” I guffawed, my guts already wrenching with apprehension. “I… I have another question.”

Gigli shifted back towards me and sat on the metal floor.

“While I’m still here, shoot.”

“What is the Word of Genesis?” I asked.

A chill washed over Gigli’s face and a swift tremor crawled down his back. With his eyes staring at me from above invisible glasses, all trace of joy vanished in his voice, his next words struck me like a hammer.

“How do you know that name?” he swallowed.

Unable to sustain his glare, I looked at the ceiling as I nibbled on my lower lip.

“On the radio, there was that Pegasus. He asked if we had brought it with us.” I met back his stare. “What is it?”

“It’s a weapon.” I held my breath. “In fact we don’t know… There is a legend going on that Luna herself promised something to the First Pegasus Army… I don’t think that even they knew what it was.”

“You have no idea?”

“We, Ponies, have the distasteful habit to give pompous names to our projects. We probably try to compensate for something. In fact, talking about hypothesises… I have one.” My ears perked up. “Equestria tested a weapon on civilians during the last year of war. It was called the Cococ, or cinnamon gas.”

Gigli dropped his stare and held himself between his forehooves, shivering as his eyes looked a thousand-yard away above me.

“You’ve seen it?” I wondered.

“Unexploded ordinances, compound pools, and stagnant residues. A long time ago… Back when…” He shook his head. “This gas was meant to kill living beings while leaving the infrastructure quite intact. Didn’t work very well.”

Pain and hurtful memories cast on his face, he swallowed as he slowly looked up at me.

“This gas sets people on fire… from the inside. I’m not talking about metaphors here. It really sets Ponies, Zebras, everything that breath on fire. I’ve seen people screaming.”

He drew a long, raggedy breath in and let it all out in short hissing puffs.

“I think that at the time they wanted to retreat out of Al-Marenama. It was a hellhole. A place where somepony died every seven seconds. I think they wanted to drop a cinnamon gas megaspell on the city and…”

“What about that… Word?”

“I think it’s a way to wash off the ‘fallout’. The compound glues to the walls, slips into every cracks, and it even melts in the bones of those it killed. It’s a death trap. But it was a way to take over Bahrneigh without anymore Pegasi dead.”

“It’s evil.”

“It’s war,” he said, wiping his nose. “Excuse me for being such a wussy. Um… I’m going out now. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

I laid in silent on my bunk bed, the linens crept over my curled up body, protecting me from the relative coldness of the station. War had never ended in Bahrneigh, Al-Marenama, or whatever. I was back in hell, prior to the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows, even prior to the Last Day. I was back two hundred and ten years in the past, back when bodies fell like sheep. It seemed impossible.

“Celestia, if you hear me… Please, help me.”

Left to my thoughts, I slowly slumbered away to the rhythm of the distant cacophony of villagers going around their daily antics. Sleep welcomes the ones whose souls seek rest.

“Hey! Wake up, wood log!”

Opening one eye, I found myself snuggled into a ball under my bed sheets. Four foals were looking at me from above the edge of my bunk bed. They were the same ones than earlier. The bright yellow filly with a mane so blue it hurt my eyes, the two Zebra twins, and the rose colt. They were relentless. Point for them.

“Was it fun?” the most talkative of the two Zebra fillies broke the ice.

“Fun, what?” I grumbled.

“Fighting star monsters, of course!” She kicked and punched through the air at invisible enemies. “Boom! Bam! Ka-tching!”

“No,” I snapped back. “Ponies died.”

A small silent hung between me and the… gang. The filly rolled her eyes.

“Not fun,” she grumbled.

“Mommy said that everypony dies last time I saw her,” the rose colt said egg-headly.

“She’s right,” I confirmed with a trailing, low voice and a nod. “Everypony wants to live but… we all die in the end. It isn’t fun...” I looked at the Zebra filly. “… at all.”

“But you should have fun then!” the bright yellow Unicorn filly finally blurted out. “Adults never have fun. Only Cartier is funny. The others are just grimacing and never smile.”

She started grimacing herself with the corresponding onomatopoeias. I smiled ruefully and sighed.

“What’s fun in all that?” I said. “Fighting, no thanks, I got my load back home and it was a mess. Helping out? It didn’t turn out so well lately.”

“He sounds like grandpa,” the other Zebra filly cut me off with a giggle.

“You didn’t have fun?” the colt asked again vehemently, banging his forehooves on the metal of the bed. “But Cartier always says great fight stories.”

“No! In a fight, there is always a winner and a loser. Cartier just had the luck to be a winner all along!

He’s just a child, Dervish. Maintain yourself. He’s just a child. It’s no use to be mean.

“One day, he will not come back! Then, what will you say?” I breathed harshly and, upon seeing the colt stepping back from me, I gurgled, “Sorry… It’s just… Somepony dear to me died.”

“But you’re alive, that’s what…” One of the two Zebras bashed the colt over the head. “Ow!”

Chuckling sadly, pushing a birthing tear off my eye, I shook my head and focused on the colt. Rubbing his forehead, a little drop of blood was trickling over down to his cheek.

“Look what’s you’ve done,” I scolded the violent Zebra. “What your mother will say?”

They just laughed. Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the cold and dragged him back to me. Though he fought off and hacked a bit, he let me examine the scratch. It wasn’t deep or large but I had seen smaller getting very nasty if left untreated.

“Stop moving,” I ordered at the laughing colt, scrubbing over his forehead with the tip of my linen. “Come on! If you don’t let me, it won’t come off.”

“I’ll have a super-duper scar! Like father showed me once!”

I shook my head. Colts… The four youngsters laughed together. One of the Zebras scrambled around making me slip over the colt’s forehead making the small cut a bit worse. We both irked and gasped, and my throat tightened.

“Stop it!” I vented angrily at the Zebra.

I hated blood. As I scrubbed over, it tainted all the sheet and worse, I was painting the colt’s forehead with it.

“And stop laughing,” I ordered.

“It was fun!” the colt assured.

“No it’s not,” I countered. “You’ve got blood on your face. Getting wounded is no fun.”

“Oh, t’is just a scratch. I don’t worry,” the colt exclaimed. “I’m not gonna get blamed for it.”

“Aren’t you worry about your mother knowing you got hurt?” I replied. “You’re gonna get grounded.”

“Oh, I won’t get blamed,” the rose colt snarled.

I paused and eyed him with a wondering look. His mother was very liberal… maybe too much for my liking.

“Somepony else will,” he dropped, his pinpricks eyes piercing me.

I froze with a knot in my stomach. A cold sweat licked over my neck and back. I felt shivery.

“Who?” I blabbered, biting on my tongue as I focused on scrubbing the ever-flowing blood. “Come on, your mother will be dead serious about you getting harmed.”

It was getting everywhere, reddening his rosy fur. Celestia dammit, it was messy.

“No, mother won’t!” he assured. “She will never blame me!”

I rolled my eyes at him and stared straight in his eyes.

“And why so?” I defied him.

His smile spread widely across his round red and rose face.

“Because she’s dead,” he stated coldly.

I recoiled from his defiant grin and looked at the three others foals.

“Was it fun?” the two Zebras cried out at me in unison.

“No!” I burst out. Blood fell in drops from their throat where no slash had been dug yet. “It was… not.”

The blood tainted my bed sheets. First it had just been mere peeps. Now, the linen drunk at it into large puddles of red. It washed over my fur and dripped slowly down the ground.

“Look what you’ve done,” I blamed the colt as I grabbed him by the shoulders.

I went to stare right into his eyes but they had drifted away in opposed directions. His mouth was hanging open, limp. The laughter stopped abruptly. My breath speed rocketed. Unbearably slowly, I raised my head from the heap of a colt I had in my hooves, crushed, lifeless, blank-eyed. The remaining three foals were staring at me silently, a light griming out from the pit of their irises.

“Somepony else will.”

The words echoed in my head. Red covered everything. It dripped from out the cracks, trickled, and drip-dripped over my face, getting in my sore, teary eyes. Crimson. Ecarlate. My breath depleted in small, ragged in and out puffs. I was cold. I could barely open my eyes and with an heavy weight on my shoulders, I let the hissing silence engulfed me. I could only hear my breath, a whispering murmur, as I knew that accusing eyes awaited me if I reopened mine.

“Was it fun?” a female voice cracked through the uncanny silent.

“No,” I uttered.

“But you killed…” it answered. “Was it fun?”

I contemplated the contorted heap between my black red hooves. Where were my natural colours gone? My grey fur. My light blue mane. There was just red. Just that fucking red.

“No!” I boomed. “I… I could have done better. Fluttershy, she told me. We. Must. Do. Better.”

How could it be fun? There were blood everywhere! On their faces. On and out their gashes. Streaming down their cheeks like tears dripping from their bleached eyes. Sliding in their mouth in between the cracked, broken-in teeth. How could it be fun when there was blood everywhere? On everypony’s hooves, and especially on mine.

“Hey, wake up, wood log!”

I jerked from under my bed sheets with a hoof on my racing heart.

“Aaah! Sorry, Alea!” I apologized.

I wiggled aside and slipped off down the bunk bed. My head hit the sturdy floor and white crawled in my vision.

“Ow…” I grunted, rubbing my forehead.

With a spike in my gut, I saw that my friendly and beloved red Unicorn in front of me vanished, giving space to an angry-looking Zebra. I sighed and looked down in shame.

“Zina, am I right?” I mumbled.

“You’re star-damn right,” she said, giving me harmless hoofkicks into the side. “Gigli can’t come, he had an urgent course to do. He asked me to wake you up.”

“Sounds like a torture the way you say it.”

She rumbled, “Don’t be a second Cartier, I’d use one of you to bat the other.”

I zipped my mouth close and helped myself back on my shaky hooves. I was sore and hurting. A stinging pain sparked in my back leg and I crumbled on the ground in a moping, shaky heap. I felt Zina extract the painful I.V. needle very slowly.

“Stupid,” she rumbled.

As I wiped my tears, pressing hard on a gauze above the tiny hole in my hide, the Zebra reached out for something in her saddlebag. She gave me a long, tiny orange paper tube and we both looked at each other silently for a few seconds. Awkward.

“What is it?”

“Painkillers,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, it’s not the same we have back home!” I protested.

“Yeah, sure,” she snarled. “Take some, I don’t want to have to carry you around. I’m not a cart.”

I took the tube and limped towards Gigli’s desk. Not willing to bit in the paper tube, I scrambled around in search for a knife. Instead I found a scalpel and proceeded to open the tip of the tube. A series of vaguely round-shaped tabs welcomed me. Inspecting further the tube for prescription advice, I faced indecipherable Zebra glyphs.

“Um… Zina?”

Already by my side, she glared between me and the tube back and forth, disappointed.

“Could you…” I gave her my best smile. “… read this to me?”

“It’s one tab every six hours. Don’t take much. Those pills are addictive.”

I stared back at the tabs. Well… Addiction was a real thing in Equestria. Careful, I used the scalpel to break one tab in two and gulped the first halve. I would save the next one for later.

“I guess you’re hungry,” Zina deadpanned. “I have to bring you to the canteen.”

“I am,” I answered honestly, looking at the window where Gigli had chased off the children. “That… gang of fillies and colt… who are they?”

“Orphans,” Zina breathed. “Their parents went for a scavenging streak one year ago. They are still waiting for them to come back.”

She shook her head.

“At least,” she continued. “Shaman and Cartier are taking good care of them while they… wait.”

Sadness. Her head was hung a little, the side of her lips slightly scrunched up and down. She sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“Oh, fuck it,” she rasped and glared at me with some reddened stare of her, trying to set me on fire. “Get your ass moving. I’m not here to play the psychologist.”

Looking around, I found a little worn out saddlebag that I threw over my right flank.

“Just borrowing,” I excused myself.

I slipped in the tabs and a few bandages. I will have to do with those. Damn this place for not having any health potions.

We walked outside the wagon and made our way through the underground city. As I had already seen, the habitations were just mounts of slightly arranged scrapped metal, wood, and fabric. Fire camps were settled regularly to spread warmth as evenly as possible. Parents snuggled their slipping child and snores could be heard coming through many windows.

“So that’s Hiedout?” I wondered.

“Yes, it is.”

“You’re a lot here?”

“One hundred at most,” she said. “But the number is dwindling month after month.”

That shut me up for a good minute. Only after did I tried to small-talk my way out of a shameful awkwardness.

“What time is it?” I asked the Zebra mare.

“It’s night. Maybe thirty past eleven… Our clock broke two months ago and we haven’t yet find a good replacement part.”

“A cogwheel?”

“Yep. You know something about it?”

“No. Not really,” I confessed.

She didn’t answer. Instead, we kept moving through the habitation until I could see the thick entry door. Grinding was still sitting in his chair, sleeping. Only then did I see a long corridor opening behind his booth. For once, a vivid light slithered through and projected many shadows up onto the rusty rails that sat by. To the light soon joined sounds and, as we turned in the narrow alleyway, laughs.

“And then I took out my two beloved guns, ‘Head’ and ‘Tails’ and blasted off the wings of the flying Pegasus. He fell right in between three star spawns. As they fed on him, Zina and I reached out the Trading Exchange of North Al-Marenama and headed for the vault. To our greatest and upmost disappointment, it was empty!”

“Ooooh,” young voices answered.

Zina and I stepped in what was surely a saloon. Round tables adorned the place and many chairs had gathered with their occupant around a white and brown Griffon, Cartier. Mimicking his feats with his two three-barrelled gun in his talons, he managed to swerve and hack his arms across the air as he still sat. More impressive, he had the gang sitting on his lap as he did so.

“So who stole the prize?” an adult Pony asked even before the kids did.

“I’m coming to it,” Cartier smirked with a wide smile. “The truth is… we don’t know. The vault was protected by active turrets and they hadn’t fired a single shot yet before we arrived. The Gentlecoalt who’d been there before us had the keys and codes of the Exchange.”

“But, do you have an idea?”

I looked around, Ponies and zebras were playing poker on a table and one other groups of two residents were facing each other. Between them was displayed an open box with twelve sewed in triangles on each side. Little ivory tokens, black or white, were stacked on those triangles. One of the Pony grabbed two dice, put them in his glass, shook, and let the odds work it out for him. As the result came up, he moved his tokens, the whites, clockwise. I didn’t know that game.

My eyes wandered further towards the counter. Some Ponies and Zebras were drinking a murky brew served by a… Oh, fuck me… As tall as an alicorn, as large and bulky as a Macintosh, completely black from top to bottom with only a grey mane to contrast, a Horse barman was talking to his clients. He was, at least, twice my size and… look at those gigantic hooves!

On the top of the bar, a transmitter was being manipulate by a Zebra, probably listening with a pair of earplugs to transmission going around the city. The transmitter’s antenna had been replaced by a long cable that went directly to the ceiling and disappeared in a hole. It was probably going up to the surface.

“It is the… Newcomer, Dervish!” Cartier boomed over at me, making me duck.

Eyes dashed in my direction and looked at me with curiosity, apprehension, and wonder.

“And he comes from Equestria…”

Fuck you, Cartier. Just… go sit on a dragon’s dick. Cold stares, wondrous stares, curious stares, I was entitled to all of those as I stepped in with Zina. And, as I closed in the gap between me and the Griffon, I never expected the stream of questions that assaulted me.

The next hour was spent getting harassed with questions about the outside by everypony, Zebras and whatnot. I tried to be the most concise possible and helpful. Trying to tame the spite of some Zebras, which didn’t turn out so well to be honest, I skimmed over Luna’s death, which brought some relief in some of them. Telling them about the Enclave and the war that opened the sky ten years ago was the hardest part… LittlePip’s adventure was something that was hard to believe for those who hadn’t experienced it first-hoof like me. The Great and Powerful goddess and Red Eye were topics I didn’t broach much. Honestly, those two deserved their own story time, especially Red Eye.

While the attraction I created slowly withered, Zina sat next to Cartier as the four foals slowly drifted asleep next to him. It was getting late.

“I’m really thankful,” I began. “I’d not have survived out there without you both.”

“Oh, come on,” Cartier answered. “It was nothing.”

“It was something,” Zina hissed, keeping it a whisper for the children. “We lost a day of scavenging because of you.”

“Don’t be so mean, Zina. I’m sure you like to go off the road from time to time.”

“Um…” I tried.

“Mean! Me? How dare you? You’re the one trying to go checking on Pegasi.”

“Um…?”

I raised my hoof.

“It’s all fun, Zina. I’m sure you…”

“Um…?”

“What!?” Zina barked at me.

Cartier grimaced, pointing at the yawning children at his paws.

“Are… Are you two together?” I supposed

Thunderbolts sparkled out of her eyes.

“No,” she said and, slowly turning her head and staring with narrowed, pinprick eyes at Cartier’s snarky face, she growled, “Careful about your next words, birdy…”

He eyed Zina with a cowering look.

“Not yet?” he said with an amused smile.

“You’re dead!” Zina warned.

“Hey! Guys, keep quiet! I’m getting a transmission,” the Zebra working on the transmitter called out at the two birds of love. “Some scavengers got stranded in the Cathedral, they are emitting a distress signal.”

He unplugged his earplugs and a burst of static filled the saloon. Ears perked up and a ragged grave voice tuned in.

“… lost. We’ve taken refuge in a cult centre in the city. Oh, fuck! Shoot!” A barrage of bullets echoed through the intercom, soon followed by the characteristic sounds of an exploding grenade. “We’ve gathered. We’re maybe twenty, thirty survivors… Damn it.” Another explosion wracked out and left the channel hissing. “There are those monsters coming from the underground. Invisible. Please, if there is somepony out there from the Canterlot, stay safe! And if you can, come and find us. Please. If there is somepony out there...”

I rushed, pushed over the operator, and snatched the microphone.

“Hey what are you doing!?” the operator gasped as I pushed on the button at its bottom. “We must not send outward message! It’s forbidden!”

I didn’t care. At that moment, I didn’t know my move would settle my fate for the six months forward. I had people to meet. I had a mission to fulfil.

“Here is Dervish from the HMS Canterlot,” I blared. “I’m coming. You’re not alone. They are other survivors.”

I had sins to attend.

[α Ω α]

>>> Footnote!

>>> Level Up

>>> New Perk: Fast Metabolism

>>> You recover fast, but you get worn out more easily and faster than others.

>>> +1 ENDURANCE in the eight following hours after resting, - 1 afterward.